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Outsider Insights | You Can't Measure AI ROI If You Can't Measure Marketing ROI
Outsider Insights
Across Chief Outsiders, we talk to hundreds of CEOs every month. In this series, we explore the trends and challenges we’re hearing from these discussions – and what you can do if you’re facing the same issues in your business.
Lead Incubation Has a New Shape: The Marketing Hourglass Has Supplanted the Sales Funnel
Tue, Jun 21, 2022 — You spend countless hours, and endless resources, to encourage your sales team to dump leads into the top of your sales funnel, with the hopes of squeezing them through the tiny orifice at the bottom. Once those precious few fall out the bottom and onto your client rolls, now what? With an overheated market, dogged competition, and an enlightened consumer that is more fickle than ever, how can you make sure all of that effort is worth it? How can you ensure that you keep what is rightfully yours?
“We need more leads” (and what must come first)
Fri, Aug 27, 2021 — A client’s desire for “More leads from Marketing" is often the impetus for our firm’s engagements. We’ve learned that “more leads” can be great. If. There’s something that companies need beforehand, or “More leads” won’t do much good.
Your Sales and Marketing Pros Are At Odds – Here’s How to Get Them Aligned
Thu, Dec 3, 2020 — Since the era of cavemen, the roles of Sales and Marketing professionals have been fairly well defined. The earliest marketers would create awareness for that remarkable new invention, the wheel; and the salespeople would roll it down the streets, sharing the features and benefits to interested customers, then collect five dodo-birds in compensation. In the million years since, Sales and Marketing departments still have a similarly symbiotic existence -- but a lot seems to have changed in the digital era. Today, the gap between Sales and Marketing represents a gray area at most companies — from the smallest distributors, to the largest multinational enterprises.
The Marketing & Sales Accelerator
Thu, Aug 27, 2020 — 3 Steps for Achieving Greater Sales Co-authored by John Baglivo and Alan Landau A well-functioning partnership between Marketing and Sales is critical to the growth of any business. But how do you get there and ensure that your efforts are coordinated and that investments in these areas are as efficient and effective as possible? This question is more important than ever as you look to accelerate growth in a challenging market where the margin for error is slim. Unfortunately, misconceptions, misunderstanding and mistrust often get in the way of a collaborative relationship.
What You Should Do About “The 80%”
Wed, Jul 8, 2020 — Co-Authored by Kimberly Miller, CMO, Chief Outsiders and Chris Dohl, President, The Alias Group The conventional wisdom of the 80/20 rule is that 80% of your company sales come from 20% of your customers. If you believe that, then you might believe that those top 20% of customers would guarantee success. And from an operational standpoint, maybe the 80/20 rule could turn into the 20/80 rule, meaning that those 20% of customers should take up 80% of your sales team’s efforts. Now more than ever, businesses should be appreciative of their entire customer base—not just the top 20%. The 2020 coronavirus lockdown has shown us that diversity in service and product offerings and diversity in clients and prospects helps any business weather the storm.
Sales Enablement and Support
Tue, Jun 9, 2020 — Part 6 of the series: A B2B CEO’s Guide to Navigating the COVID-19 Revenue Reality Your sales executive likely has a keen sense of what types of sales support materials traditionally have been helpful, and therefore has an opinion about sales support needs from marketing. But times have changed, and the playbook has been torn up. Given the times, the sales team simply can’t say with conviction that they truly understand exactly what sales support tools will help convince buyers to move forward. In our last blog, we talked about partnering between sales and marketing for lead generation and lead management optimization. Let’s explore how sales and marketing can partner to close more sales from those leads.
Lead Generation and Lead Management Across Sales and Marketing
Wed, May 27, 2020 — Part 5 of the series: A B2B CEO’s Guide to Navigating the COVID-19 Revenue Reality Have you ever heard sales blame marketing for bad leads and marketing blame sales for not acting on the leads they give? Those are common complaints from both functions. And there are usually aspects of both sides of the coin that are accurate. In our last blog, you hopefully learned from the examples of two businesses that realigned certain responsibilities in a way that created greater cross-functional accountability for sales.
The Sales and Marketing Accountability Paradigm Shift
Tue, May 5, 2020 — Part 2 of the series: A B2B CEO’s Guide to Navigating the COVID-19 Revenue Reality In a world that has struggled to make sense of the COVID-19 pandemic, you, too, are likely working to better understand the roles that your team members will play in the recovery.
Finding the Sweet Spot in B2B Markets
Fri, May 1, 2020 — Narrowing Focus to Drive Demand In a prior blog post, I discussed how a lack of market focus can lead to poor marketing campaign conversion rates.